The Science of Pitching / 10 posts found

During the winter of 2016, a young 8th grader named Camden Minacci checked in at our physical therapy clinic for rehab after surgery on his right forearm. Cam was a baseball player, but this was not a throwing injury. You see, a few weeks prior, Cam had been playing in a basketball game in one of those gyms with the short baseline area and a door under the basket. On a breakaway, he tried to use the brick wall as his brakes, and this happened (shown with the approval of Cam and his parents). It…

In 2011, The Kingdom of The Netherlands baseball team entered the World Cup as heavy, heavy underdogs. I mean HEAVY … as in even their own national media gave them no chance. The Dutch media sent exactly zero representatives to Panama to cover the tournament. In retrospect, The Netherlands had some talent. Three players, Didi Gregorius, Xander Boegarts, and Johnathan Schoop would go on to play in the major leagues, but at the time of the tournament, they were all in the low minors. When…

Did you see the 2018 MLB Allstar Game? If you did, then you noticed one common denominator on both sides of the ball — POWER! On the offensive side, there were twenty hits — 10 homers. And on the mound, every pitcher was bringing straight fuel! Here are the maximum velocities of every pitcher in the game. Sale 100.7 mph Vazquez 99.9 Diaz 99.4 Foltynewicz 99.0 Severino 98.9 Treinen 98.9 deGrom 98.8 Scherzer 98.5 Snell 98.2 Jeffress 98.1 Morton 97.9 Jimenez 97.5 Hader 97 Berrios 96.9…

By now you’ve probably heard about the rockstar list of presenters we’ve booked for the Florida Baseball Ranch®/Dutch Baseball Skill Acquisition Summit. If you think that list is impressive, you’ll be amazed at the credentials of some the registered attendees. At the time of this writing, we have commitments from at least 10 MLB organizations and from some of the most highly regarded movement specialists and skill acquisition scientists in the industry. I’m betting the conversations…

Welcome to TWITs anonymous. My name is Randy Sullivan, and I am a recovering TWIT coach. For years my coaching style involved a traditional style that has come to be popularly known as TWIT Coaching. Oh, you haven’t heard about TWIT coaching? Let me explain: Here’s the basic formula for TWIT coaching: T: We Tell the player how to perform a skill (maybe even demonstrate it.) W: We Watch him do it. I: We stop Immediately Inform of all the things he did wrong. T: Then we Tell him…

Alex Creel is the owner of the highly regarded Golden Spikes Baseball Club and K3 Pitching in Sacramento, CA. He has been a “ranch guy” and a good friend for many years. Alex was among the attendees at the 2015 Texas Baseball Ultimate Pitching Coaches Boot Camp when Frans Bosch rocked the US baseball community with an epic presentation on skill acquisition and motor learning. The impact on Alex’s business has been significant and measurable — significant in its impact…

On Sunday night, having completed another inspiring Elite Pitcher’s Boot Camp at The Texas Baseball Ranch®, I was walking through George Bush Intercontinental Airport, terminal C, I headed to gate C12 to begin boarding, for my flight home to Florida. I was wearing my new Powerbeats® Wireless Earphones and I was jamming internally to an iTunes playlist labeled “Songs I Absolutely Freaking Love!” Just as the double drum beat in the intro of Hotel California dropped, a paralyzing thought rendered…

In the Fall of 2014, a tall skinny 17-year-old right-hander strolled into The ARMory® (the former name of The Florida Baseball Ranch®). His name was Logan Gilbert. His father shared with me that Logan had been performing pretty well on the travel ball circuit and had garnered some interest from college recruiters. But Logan and his closely knit family had a problem. You see, what the recruiters didn’t know is that the reason his travel ball coaches had limited him to only two or three-inning…

Until I met Frans Bosch at the 2014 Texas Baseball Ranch Ultimate Pitching Coaches Boot Camp, my coaching style was unremarkable and, in retrospect … suboptimal. It was what I call TWT coaching. Tell the player how to do something. Watch them do it. Then, tell them how to do it better. And, when they don’t get it right, label them “uncoachable” and move on. It’s typical … and it’s highly ineffective. According to Bosch, one of the world’s most preeminent…

In high school, I was very good at math and scored well enough on my SAT and in college placement tests to exempt freshman mathematics classes at my first school, Erskine College. At the time the enrollment at this South Carolina liberal arts school was around 500 students. It was located in a tiny “town” called Due West. I don’t know if any of this is true, but legend has it that is was called “Due West” because it was “due west of another town called…